STAGE: 'SLEEPLESS CITY' AT LA MAMA

By D. J. R. BRUCKNER

Published: April 16, 1987

IN a city whose dictator (the Organizer) has decreed general insomnia, people live nightmares and hallucinate realities - arresting police officers, men climbing trees among fiery birds, eyes of spies under the floor. Jean Tardieu, a French poet, has created, in ''The Sleepless City,'' a musical, poetic, balletic meditation on illusion which, in the performance under Francoise Kourilsky's direction at La Mama, is a two-hour trance from which we emerge shaken awake, longing to dream again.

For all its political content, this is not political, but philosophical, theater; the discourse is, in the words of the Bible, abyss calling to abyss. The Organizer boasts about trebling efficiency by banning sleep, but he could be talking about unending thinking, loving or dancing. The game is deeper than the control of zombied citizens sought by the sinister head of the General Surveillance Corps and his troops. The prize is reality and the question asked in every startling scene is: What in the world is not illusion?

At the opening, dark tiers rise before the audience, on which the Organizer, his wife and his troops strut. Then, as Genji Ito's haunting music turns martial, we follow a band upstairs into another theater where, from a gallery, we look down into the city. Jun Maeda's set there is a raised platform of slats with movable sections that are built into changing environments by the actors. It is like a child's universe where one descends into other worlds by crawling under a table or chair.

Here lights move under the floor in step with the music as the feet of two dancing women glide over it, families dream of black market sleep, soldiers drop into stupor and the Organizer's rule dissolves when a vast imaginary citizens' rally created by a radio announcer is invaded by nightmares. What is seen through officials' spectacles is unreal and what they are blind to is tangible, audible. When they remove their glasses they, like the citizens, awaken and hear the song of distant birds, so faint at first we wonder whether we do not imagine it. At last only two children remain in the dazzlingly bright city. But is it real? One child picks up a pair of the discarded glasses and, encouraged by the head of the surveillance corps who has popped up through the floor, puts them on.

In Mr. Tardieu's sleepless city all the meaning is in motion, spectacle and music; the speeches deconstruct themselves and leave us only with questions. But they are questions that leave the theater with us and draw us back into it long afterward. Creative Insomnia THE SLEEPLESS CITY, by Jean Tardieu; directed by Francoise Kourilsky; music by Genji Ito; environment by Jun Maeda; lighting by Watoku Ueno; costumes by Carol Ann Pelletier; sound consultant; Phil Edelstien; stage manager, Stephanie Fleischmann. Presented by La Mama E.T.C. and Ubu Repertory Theater. At 74A East Fourth Street. WITH: James L. King, Philippe Ambrosini, Miguel Braganza, Alexi Mylonas, Ralph Denzer, Cedering Fox, Waguih Takla, Lilah Kan, Jesse Devine, Razuki Takase, Nina Zuckerman, Rene Houtrides, Terrell Robinson, Laurence Gleason, Jennifer Rohn, Margarita Mandaka and Chris Odo.